Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/378

 listened to, an open rupture must then have ensued. They publicly declared that it violated in a positive and hostile manner the treaty they had concluded "in favour of the Americans in the year 1778, by which the United States agreed to guarantee the possessions of France in the West Indies; whereas, by this treaty, the very furnishing of provisions to the French islands was pronounced illegal." They alleged that it "deprived France of all the advantages stipulated in a former treaty;" and they charged the Americans with "the abandonment of their neutral rights, to the injury of France," in not maintaining the pretended principle of the modern law of nations, that free ships make free goods, and that timber and naval stores for the equipment and armament of vessels are not contraband of war.

On this question, of such paramount importance to England, considering the vast amount of her maritime commerce, much has been said and written, and every view of the subject has been argued with great care and consummate ability. No doubt the feeling of nations is becoming more in favour of the principle of making all goods not contraband of war exempt from capture at sea, and the views of the more modern English statesmen are inclining in that direction; but it is only by taking a retrospective view of the measures unscrupulously adopted by both France and England during their mighty struggle that a conjecture can be formed of what will be the future effect of such or similar compacts. While